I arrived later than I expected due to some delays with the flight and made my way right back to the hotel. I hadn’t bothered to check out, so I was able to just go right to my room, and it was as I left it. I flipped on the box fan and changed out of my clothes, getting a quick shower and crawling into bed.
When I woke up the next morning, the alarm still had a little time on it and I hopped out of bed anyway, dropping to the floor to do some push-ups. I could have stayed in the bed, but without Amanda to snuggle with in the early morning hours, my desire to stay recumbent was at an all-time low. A quick set of morning exercises and I was ready for the day. I stopped at the same corner shop for coffee but forewent the chocolate croissant out of bitterness and headed to the new bar.
It had only been a day, but I could see that my brothers had been hard at work. A moving truck was parked outside with the ramp down, and I could see new kitchen equipment ready to be loaded in. A few men in blue coveralls were moving stuff around back there, and I assumed they must have hired professionals to get things situated easier while they took on other tasks. Opening the door, I saw what some of them were.
Ava was right beside the main door, painting the wall right beside it, and her face lit up when she saw me. I gave her a quick hug as I looked around at the space. The bar had been polished, and a new top had been laid over it, the old one lying on the floor in front. Various new décor littered the walls, and streaks of paint in competing colors were on various spaces of the walls.
“You guys are already hard at work, huh?” I asked.
“We are,” Ava said. “We all agreed this wall over here needed some color to cover up the marks here, so I went ahead and took that over. We’re trying to decide between several colors for that wall if you want to weigh in. Jordan and Tyler are replacing the bar top and have been extraordinarily loud in the process. And Mason is over there hanging some of the stuff we found at the thrift store. You said you wanted the bar to have a uniquely Oregon history feel, right?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, nothing says Oregon more than a bunch of little old ladies’ knickknacks and old men’s man-cave garage wall hangings.”
“True,” I responded. “Not quite what I had in mind, but we can tinker. We can tinker.” She smiled, and I moved further into the wide space we were going to fill with tables and chairs. Tyler came out from the back and wrapped me in a big bear hug before taking me off to the side to talk.
“So how did things go with Amanda?” he asked. “Did you get in touch with her?”
“I did, but she shut me out,” I said. “I don’t know if things are just different for her now or if she just doesn’t want to deal with it at the moment, but she wouldn’t give me the time of day over it. She practically bought my plane ticket, telling me I needed to come back here, that they have things handled there.”
“Bummer, man,” Tyler said. “Are you okay?”
I was about to respond when Mason came into the room, announcing himself loudly, and wrapping me up in a hug as well.
“How did it go?” he asked. “You profess your undying love for Amanda?” he asked, looking back and forth between me and Tyler. Slowly, his face dropped. “You didn’t?” he asked. I shook my head.
“I didn’t have a chance to,” I said. “She’s in a different place right now, and whatever or wherever that place is, it’s not anywhere near I am. So I just have to deal with it and try to get her to talk to me some other time. But I needed to come take care of this first. How is it going here?”
“It’s going,” Mason said. “Are you sure she won’t talk to you?”
I sighed. “Maybe it was too much for her. Maybe she didn’t like that we crossed that line. Not everything ends up like in movies, Mason.”
Mason nodded, and we went to work on decorating and preparing the building. It would take